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South Korean drivers are concerned that their future EVs could catch fire while charging or in a car crash ... In 2020 and 2021, several high-profile cases of EVs catching fire were reported in South Korea. Three years ago, an electric bus manufactured by Hyundai Motor caught fire while in use. A few months earlier, Hyundai Motor recalled more than 77,000 Kona EVs sold globally after 13 of the electric crossover vehicles caught fire. Hyundai and its battery supplier LG Chem were at odds over the reasons for the recall, with the battery cell maker saying it wasn’t its battery...

Ford's EV business posted a big loss for the third quarter.. The strike against Ford may be over, but the company's electric vehicle woes are far from solved. The entire auto industry, grappling with steadily softening EV demand over cost and existential infrastructure challenges, is beginning to pull back its efforts to grow the sector. Tesla (TSLA) - Get Free Report, of course, is dealing with falling sales figures and gross margins amid an ongoing price war whose aim is to entice customers to go electric. General Motors (GM) - Get Free Report, still locked in the throes of the...

In the past year, lithium-ion battery fires in electric vehicles have led to blazing wrecks along highways that take firefighters hours to extinguish and buildings that go up like a torch from fires that cannot be swiftly brought under control. And now, a plant that uses lithium to make components for batteries for electric vehicles has gone up in flames. A plant belonging to the Livent Corp. was on fire early Monday in the North Carolina town of Bessemer City, according to WCNC-TV in Charlotte. The company said there were no reports of injuries and that all employees were accounted...

E-bikes and e-scooters have flooded New York City’s streets in recent years, embraced by delivery workers and commuters as an economical and efficient new way to get around. But even as the devices have become nearly ubiquitous, the batteries inside them have made New York City an epicenter for a new kind of ferocious and fast-moving fire. These fires are “uniquely dangerous,” warned Laura Kavanagh, the city’s fire commissioner. With little or no warning, the batteries can ignite, leaving seconds for people to escape. In just three years, lithium battery fires have tied electrical fires and have surpassed blazes started...

Saindy Pyles thought she was going to die with her baby son, Liam, clutched to her chest as she flew home to Wichita from Miami after photographing a wedding. Midway through the flight Pyles said smoke filled the cabin after she saw sparks and fire burst from a bag in the seat directly behind her. "Honestly, I thought we were going to die," she said. "I looked and all I saw was flashes, just like flashes. I'm like, 'Oh my God, like, what is that?' And [the owner of the bag] is like, 'I don't know. I don't know.'" "Then...

Many of the fires start when people charge bikes overnight, allowing them to overheat ... The fires appear to be concentrated in New York City, where the number of blazes more than doubled last year to 216, according to the New York City Fire Department. Fires from e-bikes and other so-called micromobility devices such as electric scooters have injured 40 people and killed two this year, the fire department said. “These are incredibly dangerous devices if they are unregulated or used improperly,” New York Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh said at a press conference in late February. ... Many e-bike fires...

Some building owners, mainly in New York City, are clamping down on electric bicycles after a recent spate of damaging and deadly battery fires. Why it matters: E-bikes are surging in popularity, but the benefits they bring — lower emissions, easy transportation — are threatened by the growing toll of injuries and deaths from blazes sparked by their lithium-ion batteries. E-bike advocates link the problems to batteries that are poorly made, refurbished or improperly charged. New York has seen "an exponential increase" in battery fires this year, Daniel Flynn, chief fire marshal at the New York City Fire Department (FDNY),...

One day after officials touted the passage of the Connecticut Clean Air Act, including plans for thousands of electric vehicles to hit the road, one of the state-run electric buses caught on fire over the weekend. The blaze engulfed a CTtransit bus in a Hamden parking lot Saturday morning, sending two workers and a firefighter to the hospital, officials said. “Lithium ion battery fires are difficult to extinguish due to the thermal chemical process that produces great heat and continually reignites,” Hamden fire officials said. Two transit workers were hospitalized as a precaution after being exposed to the smoke. A...

General Motors is recalling tens of thousands of Chevrolet all-electric Bolt hatchbacks for the second time in less than a year because of a potential fire risk. The company made the move on Friday after two Bolts caught fire without impact recently. GM is confirming that at least one of the Bolt fires was battery related and happened despite the owner getting the fix from the first recall. This time, GM said it would recall all 2017-19 model-year Bolts. In total, the recall involves 68,000 vehicles globally; of those, 50,925 are in the United States. The vehicles contain high voltage...

Following incidents in Washington state, Mexico andTennessee, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it would probe fires that occurred recently over a six week period in Tesla Motors’ electric Model S. And this week, as revealed in a Detroit News story, the NHTSA looks like they’re serious – at least more serious than Germany’s transportation safety authority. Why bring up Germany? Because as the regulatory heat bears down in the U.S. on Tesla and high-profile CEO Elon Musk, they have trotted out the Eastern Europe nation to demonstrate that they’ve been absolved of any culpability in the fires. The...

A short circuit inside one cell started the 787 battery fire, and assumptions used to certify the battery system proved wrong, the NTSB said Thursday.The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has pinpointed the start of the 787 Dreamliner battery fire on a parked Japan Airlines jet a month ago today as a short circuit inside a single cell. The agency still hasn’t identified the cause of the initial short circuit but has narrowed down the suspects. Details provided by the NTSB make clear that Boeing will have to redesign the battery for a long-term fix. In addition, the NTSB pointed...

In January of 2010 USA Today reported that Consumer Reports (CR) temporarily suspended its recommended rating for eight Toyota models. This was in response to the possibility of Toyota models being unsafe as accusations were made that the vehicles had sudden acceleration problems and NHTSA investigated the alleged incidents. In CRs' words, "Although incidents of sudden acceleration are rare, we are taking this action because the vehicles have been identified as potentially unsafe without a fix yet being available to consumers." CRs' response to the Chevy Volt NHTSA fires is quite different from the Toyota response. Change a few...

With investigations into the safety of the Chevrolet Volt’s battery pack on-going , Automotive News reports that GM is going to go with a whole new battery technology in the upcoming 2013 Chevrolet Spark Electric that is safer, more stable, and will have a longer life than the Volt’s lithium ion battery pack. Currently most electric cars and hybrids including the Chevy Volt and Buick LaCrosse E-Assist use lithium metal oxide chemistry in their Lithium Ion battery packs, sourced from LG Chem in South Korea. According to Automotive News GM’s planning on using phosphate-based lithium ion batteries on its...

Some troubling inconsistencies are arising regarding General Motors and NHTSA's response to the crash-tested Chevy Volt fires first reported a few weeks ago. NHTSA and GM delayed informing the public of the initial Volt incident that occurred about six months ago until recently. According to an early NY Times piece on the exploding Volt, NHTSA and GM claimed that they were unable to replicate the fire that occurred at the time. In fact, according to a CNN Money piece that ran when the story first broke, GM spokesman Greg Martin stated that the Volt battery pack was subjected to...